In recent years, with the widespread use of liquid crystal panels, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are increasingly becoming popular.
GUIs that have been used in only high-performance personal computers are increasingly used for the user interface of remote controllers for facility equipment. The reason for this is there are advantages that usage of GUIs enable to suppress the increase in the number of switches and the like with the increase in the functionality of the remote controllers and that users can intuitively and easily operate the remote controllers.
The number of commands required for GUI processing is large, and the GUI processing therefore consumes large part of a computational resource of a Central Processing Unit (CPU), a microcontroller, or the like.
On the other hand, in general, a low-performance processing unit such as a microcontroller is used in a remote controller for facility equipment from the viewpoints of cost efficiency, heat generation, and power consumption.
When a GUI is used as a user interface for the remote controller, the execution of an application program for the operation of the remote controller itself may be therefore delayed.
In addition, GUI processing requires a large amount of memory since bitmapped screen images are created in the memory. Accordingly, it is necessary to dispose a large-capacity memory in the remote controller.
Related to the above, as an object “to provide an excellent network-ready lighting control system including a remote monitor capable of performing an operation similar to that of a lighting controller without using many memory resources”, a technique that “when the touch panel of a remote monitor 2 having no screen application is operated, a recognized object number on a screen is transmitted to a lighting controller 1 and the lighting controller 1 having a screen application searches for frame data to be drawn on the remote monitor 2 on the basis of the received object and transmits the frame data to the remote monitor 2” is disclosed (Patent Literature 1).